Perceptual coding strategies in the formation and verification of descriptions.

Three experiments were carried out to study the "picture coding" process implicit both in making up descriptions of pictures and in verifying descriptions against pictures. In the first experiment, Ss were asked simply to describe pictures of one object above another; some pictures were symmetrical vertically and some were not. In the other two experiments, other Ss were timed as they judged whether sentences likeStar isn't below line were true or false of such pictures. According to the results, Ss comply to three ordered "preference" rules in describing the two objects, rules that are conditional on characteristics of the picture and demands of the task. Furthermore, Ss in the verification task comply to the same three rules when they view and encode the picturebefore they read the sentence to be verified, but to only one of the rules when they view the pictureafter they read the sentence. The results also reconfirm two recently proposed models for the process of verifying sentences against pictures.